The tactical advantage of destroying your own railroads



In this video, we take a look at why countries would destroy their own railroads and the devices used to do such a thing

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This video falls under the fair use act of 1976

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40 thoughts on “The tactical advantage of destroying your own railroads”

  1. Heck today it would be possible to get a rail car with a arm of some kind on it and just pull the steel rails up as you head back to friendly territory and collect it in cars. Not only taking their tracks away from them but also bringing back material. Make ammo out of their own steel or something.

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  2. hi train of thought, i love the name, fantastic. Here's a video idea: How railways gave us time – do about timetables and how without railways we might all still be running on different times for each city!

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  3. This surely made a huge impact in the US Civil War, WWI, WWII, and others from 1850-1950, but how would this play into more modern wars? Do militaries still use rail as part of their invasion tactic? These days it feels like more is done with trucks, less efficient but more flexible and less vulnerable to stuff like this.

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  4. There’s an example of Sherman’s Bow tie at the Museum of the Confederacy. It was wrapped up against a fence post so many times that it looks more like a churro than a rail.

    On a side note: the south’s railway gauges were all over the place prior to the war. Some were standard, but a lot were large-gauge tracks, such as the often depicted City Point Railroad that led from City Point, Virginia to the city of Petersburg.

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  5. Bombing the rail network, on the other hand, proved to be very inefficient. The allies tried that over and over again on important German rail junctions or stations in general, but they were surprisingly fast repaired each time. Plus most of the bombs missed and didn't even explode, which is why to this day there are on average 2-3 old wartime bombs that need disarming in today's Germany.

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  6. in ww2 the germans destroyed 98% of the dutch railnetwork including but limited to
    stealing every single overhead wire in the country
    blowing up every bridge they could find
    ripping up tracks with railplows
    stealing all the equipment from signal boxes
    destroying the signal system
    stealing the rails

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  7. Germany ripping up railways in France did very little to slow the American-British advance, given those armies' preference for trucks for transporting supplies. For example, see the Red Ball Express.

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  8. a narrow gauge railway near where I live in France was a victim of a bombing raid by the RAF during the run up to D Day.
    from what Information I read the railway served as a narrow gauge connection to the outside world. it was more or less a tram way if the model railway was anything to go by. run into the ground by the Germans and the bomb damage it closed after the end of the war

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  9. It hurts an enemy far more to hit them in their ENERGY: destroy electrical generation, subatations, oil wells, refineries, and coal mines. Then it won't matter if their tracks are intact, no locomotives can operate.

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  10. Ukraine has destroyed all railways leading to Russia, although I think they used explosives rather than the methods outlined above. This severely hinders the Russian army. The Russians are now trying to disable railroad infrastructure, but Ukraine is able to repair them faster than Russia can damage them.

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  11. The Ukrainians know this & are targeting russian tracks as we speak!
    We had that foul human being Dr. Beeching. I deplore what that man did to our rail network!
    I used to live near Brixham station. If Beeching never happened the Paignton to Kingswear line, now a steam railway again, would've had lots of options using the Brixham branch line.
    How about getting on a glorious G.W.R. coach in Paignton pulled by a classic 0-6-0 pannier tank to Brixham station. The vista of the whole of Torbay opens up as you step from the station onto Furzeham Green.
    A pair of Shire horses in harness ready to take you in an open char-à-banc down the winding hill to Brixham harbour.
    There, you hop on to a ferry that chugs around Berry Head, past St. Mary's Bay beach (Mudstone to the locals) and up the Dart to Dartmouth.
    There's time for lunch now & there are many excellent eateries to choose from.
    After lunch and a stroll along Bayard's Cove (Where the filmed the Onedin Line) it's onto the ferry that cuts across the River Dart to Kingswear.
    Our train is waiting at Kingswear Station to chuff our way to Paignton where we started.
    But this massively popular day out, that would help to save many more classic locomotives & rolling stock, can't happen because that ghoul Beeching ruined our rail network because the transport minister had a HUGE conflict of interest through owning a road building company.
    Google "Marple Beeching cuts" for the whole sorry, painful tale of railway destruction!
    (He said, getty back on topic at last! Huzzah!)

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  12. Another problem is armoured trains, which are usually railway artillery batteries. These things were incredibly mobile and can quickly reposition even in Russia's 'Rasputitsa' or 'Mud Season'. If you don't want these things marauding on your flanks and covering the advance of railway-borne troops you either blow bridges or tear up lines.

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